by Alec Waugh
It was an immense wide scar; the flesh drawn and puckered, sunk in where a bone had been extracted. It was simultaneously impressive and repulsive.
“That’s what we call a scar. And I got that from real Germans, from the Afrika Corps at Alamein; yon can go down on your knees and kiss it.”
He stood there for a quarter of a minute, then straightened up, pulling up his trousers as he did so.
“Good-night ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to have had to make this exhibition.”
Leaning against the veranda rails, Carl Bradshaw thanked his stars that he had had the prescience to come up this evening.
7
After breakfast the next morning, the Governor sent for his A.D.C.
“Were you at the club last night?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you heard what took place there?”
“No, sir.”
“Then go to the Jamestown Club before lunch this morning, and keep your ears open. Don’t ask questions, but if anyone starts talking, encourage him. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Governor gave him a close look.
“Are you feeling all right, Denis?”
“Yes thank you, sir.”
“You don’t look as though you did. You look—” His Excellency paused. “I don’t know how a person looks after a shot of cocaine, but I imagine he’d look much as you do now.”
Archer laughed. For that in point of fact was how he did feel. He was in a trance and knew it; in a trance and gloried in it. Never had he felt more alive. For ten days he had been thinking if only he could have Margot to himself for a whole evening, not for a snatched moment, he could make her really his. Now that a whole evening lay behind him, an evening that had been more of a dream than he had dared to dream, he had the exciting but disconcerting knowledge that whether she was his or not, he very certainly was hers.
From His Excellency’s study he went straight to the Secretariat. The two girls looked up. He addressed the other one.
“H.E. wants to dictate a draft. Could you go along to him right away.”
As the door closed behind her, he crossed to Margot’s desk. Her eyes were watching him. Was there a fonder look in them? He did not know. There seemed a closer one. I must keep this light, he thought. I mustn’t be intense.
He sat on her desk, picked up her hand, turned it over in his, ran his forefinger along her nails.
“They don’t seem so sharp this morning. You wouldn’t have thought they could do all that damage.”
“It was your fault wasn’t it they did?”
The tone on which she said it sent a flutter of flattered vanity along his nerve.
“I don’t know how I’m going to go bathing at Grande Anse next Sunday with a back like mine.”
She smiled, but she said nothing. She had a capacity for eloquent silences. “In some South Sea islands,” he went on, “a man isn’t considered a man till he has scars of that kind on his shoulders, but this is the Caribbean.”
He turned over her hand; raised the palm, laid it against his cheek. He felt a slight roughness underneath her thumb. A film of new skin lay over a small cut. She saw him glance at it.
“No,” she said, “that was afterward.”
The undertone of meaning set the blood pounding through his veins. He had never known anything like this; he had never suspected that there was anything like this. He could not rely on chance occasions when her parents were away.
“I’ve thought of something,” he said.
“Yes?”
“There’s a summerhouse in the garden, a chalet where Governors’ wives do their sewing and keep their children out of mischief. It’s not used now. I could tell H.E. that I want somewhere quiet where I can do some writing. We could meet there, couldn’t we.”
“Why not.”
The summerhouse lay out of sight of the windows of the house. It lay off the main path leading to the secretariat. No one would ever see either of them going there. They could meet there, nearly every day, at some time or another. Excitement bubbled in him. He wanted to make her a long speech; but this was not the time for speeches.
“I’m going to write a poem: it’ll be a very good poem. People will say it must have been a very wonderful girl who inspired so good a poem.”
“Do that,” she said.
On his way down to the club he saw Bradshaw coming out of the post office. He drew up beside the curb.
“Like a lift? I’m going to the club.”
Bradshaw had just mailed his article. He was in the best of tempers. He was in one of the moods rare with him when he could use a drink. “Fine. I’d love to.”
He was also feeling garrulous. By the time they reached the club Archer was at least partially briefed as to what had transpired the previous evening.
8
Bradshaw’s article reached Baltimore forty-eight hours later. The Foreign News sub-editor whistled as he read it.
“The old man had better see this hadn’t he?” he asked his chief.
“He certainly had.”
Romer raised his eyebrows as he read it. His hunch had been correct.
“Is that all right sir?”
“It’s very much all right.” He hadn’t realized Bradshaw had it in him.
“What about this bit about the Governor’s son?”
Romer reread it. The incident outside the courthouse had been quoted as an example of the electric atmosphere beneath the surface. Anyone was ready to snap at a moment’s notice. It prefaced the scene at the club later that same evening. It was not strictly necessary. The article could stand without it. Romer hesitated. He was a family man. He would not like having a thing like that appearing about his son. At the same time he was a journalist. News was News. Only under very exceptional circumstances did you kill a story that was news. Was this one of them? He did not see how it was. He had been the Governor’s guest. But you had to abuse hospitality, on occasions. Your host, unless he was an idiot, recognized that fact. He asked you to his house knowing that you would write him up. Nine times in ten he would be disappointed if you didn’t. Feelings were hurt occasionally. Sometimes a genuine confidence was betrayed. Was this one of those occasions? He did not think it was. The Governor had entertained him at the expense of the British taxpayer. The Governor had placed no particular confidence in him. The Governor had not told him that he was planning to implement the new constitution right away. He had had to read it for himself in a New York paper. No, there was no reason why he should consider the feelings of His Excellency, Major General the Lord Templeton. “Let it stand,” he said.
If the engine of that launch had remained stalled five minutes longer, he would have been taken into the Governor’s confidence and that passage about the Governor’s son would have been erased.
“Let it stand,” Romer repeated. “And send Carl a cable of congratulation,” he added.
Ten hours later a copy of that cable lay on the Governor’s desk.
At one point in his military career, Lord Templeton had been employed in Intelligence. He had learnt there the routine of security checks; road, rail, mail, cable, air. Spread a net with a strand at each key point, know what was coming into the country and what was going out and you would learn if anything funny was afoot. He could not check the mail. There was no censorship. But he had methods of his own of keeping a check on cables. Romer’s cable to Bradshaw interested him. He wondered what the old quean had said. He cabled a friend in New York asking him to send down every copy of the Baltimore Evening Star that carried an article signed Carl Bradshaw.
Chapter Ten
1
The final words of advice given to Lord Templeton by the Minister of State for the Colonies had been, “When in any doubt produce a simile from the cricket field.” His Excellency remembered that advice when he prepared the speech with which he was to announce the new constitution.
“I came to the islands first,” his speech began, “over a qua
rter of a century ago, as a member of an M.C.C. eleven. It was not a particularly strong eleven, by the standard of international cricket: if it had been, I should not have been a member of it. We took our cricket casually, we regarded the tour as a holiday, we delighted in your scenery, we enjoyed your hospitality, we appreciated your friendly, gay, large-hearted way of life, we were struck by the enthusiasm with which you played cricket and the excitement, I must add the intelligent and sportsmanlike excitement, with which your crowds followed the play. But at the same time I do not think one of us imagined that we should live to see a day when a West Indian cricket eleven would beat the full strength of England at Lord’s, and in a Test match.”
He paused. He looked round him. He was seated in the chair that the Judge had occupied for the Preston trial. He was wearing the uniform of office, dark blue, braided with silver; four rows of medals above his heart; on the table beside him was his plumed cock-aded hat; behind him was the Royal coat of arms; with the standard of Santa Marta beside the Union Jack. Immediately in front were the members of the Legislative Council, the seven nominated members on his right, the five elected members on his left. There were the representatives of Government, the Attorney General, the Colonial Secretary, the one in wig and gown, the other in white uniform, with gleaming Sam Browne belt. Three of the nominated members were white men; two were slightly colored, two were completely black. The five elected members were all very dark: they looked highly uncomfortable in their dark suits and stiff white collars.
In the body of the hall, by invitation, were the island notables; the civil servants, the officials, the planters, the lawyers, the business chiefs; at the back, standing, and round the walls, were such of the proletariat as had managed to crowd the passage. Dark faces peered through the windows; from the boughs of the mango in the courtyard, and from the broad high wall round it urchins were gazing into the dark cool room.
Templeton was conscious of his audience. For this one hour he was speaking for this people, the mouthpiece of its ambitions and aspirations. The island expressed itself through him. The feeling lent his voice sincerity.
“The strides made by West Indian cricket in the last thirty years have astounded and dazzled the cricket playing world; but equally astonishing have been the strides made by the West Indians in culture, housing, education, in raising the standard of general living. Thirty years ago I should not have thought it possible that within my lifetime I should talk of Dominion status for the West Indies. I thought of you, I must confess it, as an essentially backward people. I thought the West Indians would need many years of tutoring. I anticipated a process of gradual development. I did not believe that universal suffrage was a practical proposition. Certainly not universal suffrage with a majority of elected members in the Legislative Council. Yet that is what this new constitution gives you. Universal suffrage and nine elected members to three nominated members in the Assembly.”
He explained the details of the constitution. He announced the date of the elections. He reached his concluding paragraphs.
“This constitution,” he said, “gives you considerable powers of self-government, but it does not give you self-government. You must remember that. Certain powers are retained by the Governor. I have the right of veto. I can dismiss a minister. I can even suspend the constitution. But I would remind you that I am not myself in the position of a dictator. I am the Throne’s representative. I am responsible to the Throne, and through the Throne I am answerable to Parliament. I can be dismissed. You have the right to petition the Throne against my administration. I say this, confident that no such situation can arise here, but to remind you that Santa Marta is not yet a self-governing Dominion; it is a Crown Colony; subject to the privileges and obligations that a Crown Colony enjoys. At the same time, in view of what has happened in the immediate past, in view of the immense recent progress in every walk of life, I have no doubt that in a very short while the West Indies will be federated in one self-governing Dominion, and in that Dominion Santa Marta will play a significant and valuable part.”
He had ended. He rose, picked up his hat. Outside in the sunlight he could see his Guard of Honor forming. The gathering had risen too. He walked slowly down the passage between the benches. He had known many proud moments, but none prouder than this. He was lucky in having had this full rich wine prepared for his final banquet. He was lucky in having his son here to savor its bouquet with him.
He paused in the doorway, standing at the head of the short flight of steps that led to the square in whose center stood the war memorial. It was a bright clear morning; with an occasional cloud drifting across the sky; the high peak of the diadem was unveiled. The sunlight poured in mild amber radiance onto the mildewed stone of the custom house, onto the yellow and green shutters of the houses, onto the dull red brick of the old French buildings. Beyond the roof tops he could see the sea. The square was crowded, with boys, girls, men and women, old and young, all of them in their brightest clothes, the women with handkerchiefs knotted in their hair, some wearing the long traditional French skirt, the boys in their blue jeans and bright beach shirts. How did they all manage to be here? It wasn’t a holiday. If they were able to afford these gay clothes, how were they not working? It was a question that he had often asked himself in England, seeing the cricket crowds at Lord’s and at the Oval on a week day.
His heart warmed at the sight of them. They were chattering and laughing. They did not cheer, that was not their way, but they were here on his account. On a morning such as this, it was hard to believe that there was such a thing as trouble in the world.
2
Mails from England via New York came in by air twice a week. A large official mail awaited the Governor’s return. The private mail was small. He rarely wrote a personal letter nowadays, except in sympathy for a bereavement or to congratulate an old friend upon an honor or a grandchild’s birth. How your personal life dwindled in the last third of your life. You no longer had friends, only professional contacts. If you were ambitious that was to say. It started, he supposed, with your first staff appointment. Until then you were part of a community, family, school, village, regiment; you were at one with a hundred others: then you were on your own, part of somebody’s staff, someone in transit, on your way to another staff, to a staff of your own: making close friends with the men with whom you were associated for a period; forgetting them, or at least losing touch with them when you and they passed to another post, to become identified with another group: like passengers on a transatlantic crossing separating when the ship docked, like actors and actresses in a cast scattering when the final curtain fell. Someone in transit. That’s what you became.
He shrugged. He was probably an exception. He was a widower. It would have been different without that car smash in the blackout. Marjorie would have maintained a central core of living for him. There would have been his home, and all that gathered round a home: a fire at which others could warm their hands. He ought, he supposed, to have remarried. He wasn’t sixty yet. There was still time. But he knew there wasn’t. At least not for him. He was too committed. He began to work through his letters, quickly, methodically; arranging them in their separate trays according to their urgency. There was no out mail for two days. He had not to hurry about answering. He turned to his newspapers. There were four copies of the Times: there was also a copy of the Baltimore Evening Star. That was, he reminded himself, an official sideline. He opened it first.
“I sit on a volcano.” That was the heading across double columns.
“I sit on a volcano,” he began to read; “one of the peaks of a now submerged range of mountains that curved in prehistoric days in a semicircle from the tip of Florida to Venezuela. Geographically, geologically I sit on an extinct volcano, but socially, politically I sit on an active, a very live, volcano here on the veranda of a hotel in the charming British West Indian island of Santa Marta. I can hear its rumblings beneath me.
“These are the chemical ingredi
ents that cause those rumblings: a proletariat, ignorant and resentful, maintaining a bare level of subsistence; a small patrician class, ignorant and backward, unaware of the changes that have taken place in political thought during the last twenty years, still thinking in terms of the nineteenth century, hating the proletariat and afraid of it, ridden by a sense of guilt for their ancestors’ treatment of that proletariat, knowing themselves powerless and outnumbered. There is also a small clan of intelligent, educated colored men who resent the color bar and the secondary position in which it places them; who feel themselves ill-used by these distinctions; there is a demagogue anxious to stir up unrest and to exploit unrest. Resentment, fear, distrust, a need for revenge, these are the ingredients that create an electric inflammable atmosphere. Sooner or later there must be an explosion. Will the spark be applied this week or next week, this year or next? I do not know. But the trail will very certainly be laid next Thursday, when the Governor of the Island, His Excellency, Major General the Lord Templeton, drives down in state to the Legislative Council to announce a new constitution for the island.
“By this new constitution power will pass out of the hands of what the Governor of another island called ‘The Sugar Barons’ into the hands of a few colored politicians, who will be able to exploit the voting power of a credulous inflammable proletariat that has no political education. It is idle to call this democracy. It is the substitution of one oligarchy by another. An enlightened oligarchy is probably the best form of government for a backward, agricultural community such as Santa Marta. But will this new oligarchy prove more efficient, more long-sighted, more disinterested than the last? Before we answer that question let us consider the financial position of Santa Marta.”
Carl Bradshaw had studied the colonial reports issued by the Stationary Office for the last dozen years; these reports contained profit and loss statements of the island’s finances; they showed that the island was entirely dependent on its three main crops of sugar, copra, cocoa, and that its economy was tightly linked with that of Britain. Britain purchased its sugar at a price fixed in relation to the price paid for sugar in other parts of the Empire. Santa Marta could not sell its cocoa in the open market. Britain bought it and resold it. The island was under the control of the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade.